dead sexy slab

The parking strip is all finished but we still need to add sand and gravel in the joints to the front walkway. The process that we used was:

1. Dig out ~3-4" dirt for path
2. Tamp down dirt
   
3. add ~2" deep 1/4" minus gravel (this is partially because we already have solid soil that drains well)
4. tamp down
   
5. lay quartzite
6. lift stone and add ~1/2" sand
7. put stone so level in sand
8. fill joints with gravel
9. wet down gravel
   
10. admire
    

We decided to tackle a walkway not only because it is not exactly attractive to have a purely soil style walkway and yard, but you would not believe the amount of dirt that was in our house by the end of the week.

In addition, Barrett, our awesome tile guy spent a large part of his weekend over at our house installing our beautiful fireplace tile...more pictures to come soon as it should be all finished this week sometime. You can still see some of the dust created on the andirons from when Barrett jack hammered out the old hearth-it took me two rounds of dusting to get everything up. Now I just need to find some decor for the mantle.

The landscape architect in town

Ryan so graciously helped us finish dumping concrete and dead grass as well as design a sprinkler system and dig, dig, dig, dig...and drink some beer.


loading the grass into the trusty rig


Ryan diggin' the irrigation trenches-talk about rocky soil

Steve roto-tillin' it up!...check out those sexy glasses


Ben giving advice with his construction management skills and drinking some beer

Steve died trying to get his beer

Front Yard Landscape Progress

We decided it's time for landscape. Here is our picture just before my brother, Ryan so generously spent his entire weekend helping us dump heaps of grass and concrete that Steve took out while I partied in NYC. In addition, Ryan (the genius landscape architect) designed a sprinkler system and helped us shop for parts as well as dig treacherous trenches (do we have rock or do we have rock in our yard, you stop every 2 T. of dirt you dug to pull out a rock ranging from 2-12" in size-ahhhH) that you seemingly fill several minutes after you finish digging because all you have to do is stick some 1/2" PVC inside. Anyways, we finished all the sprinkler work just an hour before Ryan flew home with the exception of one part and hooking it up to the plumbing...we still have aching muscles and blisters to show for the work. More pictures to come soon.

Built-in Updates

It has been quite awhile since I have updated on our built-ins. They were finished being built in early Spring (our contractor was fabulous). He did most assembly off-site and did the final details and installs in our home (not surprised by how many little adjustments that we can't even tell are there were needed being that our almost 100 year old walls are not level). We were left to hours of staining and still need to install glass door panels as well as re-install that electrical outlets. We are debating on stained glass and regular glass but are unsure based on the price of stained glass-may just do regular glass for now and add stained as the budget and design creativity allow in the future. Fireplace tile has finally been delivered and is set for install next week.